Cold and Wet and Laughing

One of my friends has pointed out that so far I have mostly posted about running so far. This is true, so to add some variety to my blog I am going to instead start this post by recounting my first orienteering experience. As I hinted in my last post, I participated in an orienteering race called Hug og Hei held in Bymarka (a big park area full of marshes, lakes, streams, woods, ridges, and hills west of the Trondheim city center. This particular race has two rounds: the first is around 18km and the second is an additional 12km if you connect all of the points with straight lines, but the actual routes would be much longer due to the terrain.

Before the race I wasn't sure how I could possibly cover that much distance on terrible terrain, but luckily I would be running with some friends (pictured below). We decided it would be easier if we went as a group of five so that we wouldn't have to do the navigation all on our own. The day before, Paulo decided to motivate us/shatter our confidence with this video. I still cringe every time I watch it, but we joked about the video periodically during the race.

Vanja, me, Paulo, Hilde, and Andi looking fresh before the start. Please note the majestic lighting.

The start was essentially a mass of people sprinting down the same trail heading for the first point. Slowly the crowd split off depending on each person's opinion/guess of which route would be the best. The pace was fairly unrealistic for a several hour race, and we slowed down significantly before we made it to the first point. I had no idea what I was getting myself into in terms of the terrain. Initially our strategy was to stay on the drier trails. I say they were drier but not dry because Trondheim had received plenty of rain that week, and the best footing available was trails thick with mud. By the middle of the race we had pretty much given up on avoiding mud, water, and other obstacles. We cut across the marshes, scurried up and down ridges, and marched through streams. This wouldn't have been an issue except that the weather was not exactly ideal. There was frost on the ground at the start of the race, and during the race we received everything from sun, to rain, to snow. Gotta love the predictably unpredictable weather in Trondheim.

Cutting across marshy fields was the worst. It felt like running on a thick sponge saturated with icy cold water, with an extra layer of standing water on top. Our feet would numb and then thaw with every crossing, and the unsupportive footing was exhausting. Along one section I think gravity was broken because we were running/crawling up a long steep slope that was essentially a marsh. Yet the water was not running downhill. I feel that I cannot do the course justice with my descriptions, so I'll stop there.

We ran/walked/climbed/crawled for over five hours, and when we got back to the base station the official said, "I am so sorry, but you have not finished the first section in time to start the second section." We all laughed, thankful that we didn't have the option to continue with the second round. We estimated that the route we had taken was roughly 25-30km long, and we were quite satisfied.

Apparently October has been a good month for getting wet. My college running coach Dave would sometimes tell our team that if you are going to do something stupid, you should make sure you aren't the only one. I took his advice a little over a week ago when I decided I wanted to go swimming in the lake up in Estenstadmarka (a wooded area with a bunch of trails near my place). I knew of a few friends who had jumped into the lake earlier in the season. I suggested the idea to my running club as a sort of ice bath after a little road race many of us were doing over the weekend. The direct quote from the team trainer Halvor was, "I'll join out of sympathy for your naive idea that the bathing outside now won't kill you." Keep in mind that it is October now and the water in the lake was probably 10 degrees C (50 degrees F) or colder. Even so, I found two more victims/friends who were willing to join the excursion.

On a cool and windy Saturday afternoon, the four of us trudged up the steep and muddy paths leading to the lake, set our outer clothes along the shore, and charged into the lake. An icy sensation swept over my body immediately. We started swimming out into the deeper area, but I only made it roughly 15 meters before my feet were numb, at which point I decided to stop. By that point I could no longer touch the bottom, and we all started to hurry back to shore. As I dried off, my nervous system could no long distinguish whether my skin was blazing or freezing. We snapped a few photos (which I still need to upload) to document our accomplishment/stupidity. Every picture shows us shivering while simultaneously smiling idiotically. Apparently this is our idea of fun, and somehow I'd like to think that Dave would approve.

Blog Fail

So I think I should start with a visual representation of my blogging history. Naturally I chose to make an Excel plot of my five posts so far and added a fourth degree polynomial fit, which is shown below (Figure 1).

Look at that nice R-squared of 1. Pretty impressive, I know. For now just ignore all of the improper and misleading aspects of this plot and data analysis. As you can see, this trend is not looking good for my loyal, avid readers (who definitely still exist). So to catch up on the last/lost month of activity, here are a few highlights of my September adventures in Norway. Don't be scared by the length of the post since there are many pictures. As a side note, this weekend I tried out orienteering, but I'll save that October pleasure for another post.

In mid-August I signed up for the decathlon hosted by my running club (NTNUI Friidrett club). Over the course of two days I confirmed that I am pretty terrible at throwing a variety of objects and jumping in a variety of ways. I destroyed my abs trying to pole vault and seriously thought I would injure myself in the 110m hurdles. On the bright side, although I don't know what scoring system was used, I think I scored points in every event.

Facebook provided me with a couple of pictures that really capture the awkwardness of the hurdles. The first has been described as an "epic kung-fu pose," which is probably a good call. Based on the first picture one might think that I was going to ninja kick the hurdle (or that I'm being tased), but the second picture suggests otherwise. It actually looks fairly decent as long as you ignore my trail leg tucked to the inside rather than the outside. Also please note that I'm wearing my training shoes. Not the best for a decathlon, but running spikes were not my priority while packing for Norway.

A week after the decathlon, I ran the Oslo half marathon with some of my NTNUI Friidrett teammates. A few of us are in the picture below. I ran with one teammate or another almost the whole race, which was awesome. I started with Paulo and Andi, but we eventually all became separated. By 5km I found Hilde (who you might remember from my Trondheim half marathon post (yes I just linked to my own blog and am now using nested parentheses)) and we stuck together for pretty much the remainder of the race. This was the most crowded race I've ever been in, and from start to finish we were wading through a stream of people. Despite this, Maddy, who is a Fulbrighter in Oslo (and St. Olaf alum) that I met during orientation, spotted me and cheered for me by name. She didn't even know I was going to be running. Long story short, I ran a 1:28:35, which was a 7:59 improvement from Trondheim. So if I naturally decide to do a linear fit of these two data points then... Anyway, it was a happy day. You can find more info if you search for me and then click on my name on the results page. There is even a plot of my pacing with varying horizontal scale that is almost as misleading as my blog fail plot. Almost.

Paulo, Andi, me, and Joachim at the start

Finally, as of a little over a week ago my computer refuses to turn on. My computer genius friends think it's the logic board, so fixing the computer will be too expensive but I will try to save the hard drive. The real trick will be trying to find a replacement while here in Norway while avoiding Norwegian prices and the 25% VAT on electronics shipped into the country. As a shameless plug, does anybody traveling from the U.S. to Europe in the near future want to volunteer to transport a computer? Just kidding. Kind of. (But really, I'll travel almost anywhere in Europe to meet you.)